Alexa Hack

TOTAL LOST $13K
Low Other

Summarize with AI

ChatGPT Perplexity Claude Grok
Affected Chain 2023 Incident surface
Recovered - No recovery reported
All-Time Rank #1921 By amount stolen
Auditors 1 Prior security audit

Incident Overview

Quick Summary

Alexa Project was exploited due to smart contract logic issue. The attacker took 45 $BNB.

Details of the Exploit

Alexa Project is a BEP20 token trading on PancakeSwap. The token $ALEXA was listed on the DEX on 1st March 2023. After a few days, the project was exploited due to smart contract logic issue.

The attacker was able to exploit the token's smart contract interaction with PancakePair, which allowed the malicious actor to gain 45.43 $WBNB which is worth 13,256 $USD at the moment. Liquidity was totally removed using a malicious smart contract with unverified source code. The stolen funds were transferred through several EOA addresses.

Block Data Reference

Attacker address:

https://bscscan.com/address/0x3bec7fe6…2f41ce

Malicious transaction:

https://bscscan.com/tx/0x669c98b1…167be5

Malicious contract:

https://bscscan.com/address/0x9171a1d4…7f9ba2

Incident Report

Protocol / Project Alexa
Date of Incident
Attack Technique Other
Classification Token
Primary Source View Post-Mortem #1 View Post-Mortem #2

Protocol Information

Protocol Type Dexs
Affected Token ALEXA
Official Website www.alexapro.finance/
Protocol Twitter/X @alexapro100
Team Anonymous
Source Code Verified On-Chain

What the Attacker Needed to Succeed

Understanding the prerequisites for this type of attack helps auditors identify protocols that are most at risk and helps developers build better defenses.

Technical Knowledge Deep understanding of other and Solidity and EVM internals
Capital Required Seed capital to cover gas and initial position setup
On-Chain Access Ability to interact with smart contracts and deploy a custom exploit contract
Protocol Analysis Identification of the exploitable vulnerability in Alexa's contract logic - root cause: token
Execution Speed Precise transaction ordering and timing to exploit the vulnerability within a single atomic block
Obfuscation Plan A strategy to launder and move stolen funds - typically through mixers, cross-chain bridges, or decentralized DEX swaps to resist tracing

What Auditors Should Check

Could this have been caught in audit? Likely — with a thorough Other audit checklist and test coverage
Audited by Audit Report 1 — still lost $13K. Prior audits don't guarantee safety, especially after post-audit code changes.

If you're auditing a protocol with similar architecture to Alexa, these are the critical security checks that could have prevented this incident (March 2023).

  • Verify all logic paths related to Other are guarded by proper access controls and input validation
  • Review privileged functions (owner, admin, governance) for potential abuse vectors - centralization risks should be documented and bounded with timelocks or multi-sigs

Master these auditing techniques with hands-on labs and real exploit scenarios in the Smart Contract Hacking course.

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Security Audit History

Sources & References

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